


Your Mind Rings

by Amberly



Series: The Draw [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 2nd POV, Angst, Implied Violence, M/M, References to What Bucky Went Through, Semi-graphic violence, Spoilers, Stop Steve From Being Helpful Committee, implied sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberly/pseuds/Amberly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren’t Bucky. You’re not the Winter Soldier anymore, either, but you’re not Bucky</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Mind Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to makoscorner for proofing this for me! 
> 
> My goal with this was basically to write something from inside Bucky’s head, from right after the end of Winter Soldier. It touches a lot on my views on how Bucky feels about Steve and the fact that Steve is trying not only to make him remember, but to make him who he used to be. 
> 
> This isn't my usual fandom, but I seem to have a bit of a Bucky problem, so I went with it.

You follow him, not her, even though she's clearer: soft hands and Russian in your ear, a flash of red hair. It confuses you at first. You don't know how confusion made its way past your programming, but you suspect it has to do with blue eyes and blond hair and the ghost that lives inside of you. And so you stand in the shadowed doorway, eyes glued to a lit window, metal fingers itching—

Since when do you itch?

After the museum, it comes in flashes. You come in flashes: a back arched and parted lips. Blunt nails and too thin arms. Freezing cold and bright lights and a familiar voice coming from familiar lips coming from a body you don't recognize. How many times have you died with his face in front of you? How many times have you felt lips or hands or the brush of eyelashes on your skin and woken drenched with ice?

And then there's light on the pavement and that voice, and that fucking name.

Steve Rogers. The Golden Boy. Perfect face, perfect body, perfect voice, with a catch right where it should be: at the end of your name. What used to be your name. He made it out of the war better, and the part of you that doesn't want to cry with relief wants to rip him apart. Wants to give him a metal arm and a lifetime of bloody hands. A seat in the final frozen circle of Hell, reserved for those who betray. And you've betrayed everything you've ever loved, haven't you?

You're across the street with a hand around his throat before you can blink. Before you can wake up and he's still. He's never been still in your hands before. You hate him, the way his tongue darts out to wet lips you almost remember. Do remember. They remind you of Pomegranates and something stolen, and you squeeze harder, he's probably seeing stars, and it's so funny you choke out a laugh. And then you're gone.

You want to throw up. To claw off your skin, to leave, to go back to sleep, to be wiped—you've never craved cryo like you do right now. There's no sound in the warehouse and it echoes through you like electricity, too full of things you want to keep forgetting, like how he wanted you, once, and thinks he wants you now.

Now, even though you are a corpse living on the deaths of others.

You're gone for a week.

The cold concrete of the warehouse sinks in to your bones and you feel human for the first time in 70 years. It aches, like your shoulder. Like the absence of your name on someone's tongue. His tongue, you can admit, as you dent the floor with your anger. You don't want him.

Because why want someone who can't want you? You aren't his friend. You aren't the boy from Brooklyn he worshiped at night, with those eyes and that tongue and those fucking lips. You hate those lips, the way they wrap around your name and hold it hostage. Hold you hostage.

So you go back. You watch and wait, ball cap low, careful this time. He knows you're watching. You can see it in the way he rolls his shoulders, the way he used to roll his hips, only for you. You break in when he's gone, shower, shave. Steal clothes and make no secret of your presence, leaving hairs on his pillow. You disappear with the sound of the key in the lock.

The warehouse is blissfully cold and dark and you pretend you can forget as you curl in to the corner. You aren't Bucky. You're not the Winter Soldier anymore, either, but you're not Bucky. Bucky woke in the morning curled around love and you wake in the morning curled around vomit. It's your fault. If you hadn't gone to war you could've kept Steve out and he wouldn't have ended up as Captain Fucking America and you wouldn't have been on that train with him, trying to save the world, and wasn't that fucking Steve to a goddamn T?

It's a month before you're back. The snow coats the ground like oil. It's toxic the same way, and you shiver, both in the present and the past, huddled on his doorstep the way he used to huddle in your arms. You hate that you remember, now. You'd hate him if the thought alone didn't make you taste bile.

He walks in and you're on the couch, wearing his hoodie and shaking at his scent. It lingers on your skin. And there's your name, with just the right amount of breathlessness, of pain and anguish. And you thrill and uncurl. Steve has never been taller than you. You remember the too small, too fragile days of youth, and he wants to talk. You just want to be warm.

“I remember,” you wet your lips because he wets his. Nothing was this complicated before. That blinding smile didn't burn like this before, and he reaches for you, and you bolt. Too hot, too big, and overwhelmed with the smell of gunpowder and burning rubber. He doesn't reach for you. He lets you go. And that's why you pause.

He's watching you with china blue eyes and a soft frown. It could almost be a pout, with those full lips, and you remember how they taste against your own. You watch back, tense and angry and chewing on a thin resentment you thought you could bury under the way he used to bare his throat for you. The surrender he gave you on the helicarrier. You move.  
  
You have one hand on his jaw and the other on his neck, and the part of you that will never leave knows how easy it would be to end it. End him. Go back to being a thing, to being a weapon. Back to cold and the absence of memory. The fact that you don't could be seen as courage, if it weren't so selfish.

It's not okay to kiss him. To pull him forward and flush against you, but you do, and add it to the list of sins carved into your bones. He's hard and pliant, shoulders bowed, with open lips and soft gasps and you don't deserve this.

You deserve shock and sleep, the denial of your own death. You know it. You can't bring sunshine in to Hell, and when hands curl in to the back of your shirt you pull away. Not that you can get far, with Captain America holding your shirt the way you held him during winters so cold the sweat froze on your skin at night, after sex.

“Bucky, please,” he whispers it, lips still parted, still red, and that's all it takes for you to lean back in, to share breath and warmth with someone you know better than yourself. It won't be enough and you know it, and he doesn't, but for now.

For now, you are already damned, and if an angel wants to kiss who you were, you'll let him, because you have nothing else


End file.
